Day 21: Calling the Audible

Today we headed to the club to set up some more test scenarios. Kevin and I beat Rob there, so Kevin headed down to the pond to set up a water double and a water blind. I took Fred down to the "line" and the water double (which I was worried about) went perfectly. After this, I moved him a few yards over to run the blind (which I expected to go perfectly).

As usually happens, the blind did NOT go perfectly. It was about 60 yards across the pond; only it was in an area where just getting off a little bit would tempt him to swim to the shore. I sent him out on what looked like a good line but he slipped and faltered on some rocks offshore and ended up going a bit left towards the bank. I whistle stopped him; only it seemed like more of a whistle pause. I just couldn't get him to pay attention for long enough to take a decent cast. Moreover, while he'd take the right over well, my back casts fell on deaf ears. When he reached the point of confusion and was starting to swim in circles I called him back in.

Rather than send Fred again from that spot with his brief 20 days of water blinds under his belt, I took him to the side of the pond which would make the blind about 30 yards. I lined him up and got him to go back to it and swim back to me. Kevin yelled over from the other side of the pond, "nice job calling the audible"!

I wanted Fred to perform the trickier blind, so I took him back to the rocky shore where I had originally sent him from and had Kevin drop the blind so that he could see it happen. I then sent him and as expected he went straight across and straight back. While I would have liked him to do this the first time around, the way that we changed it up to give him a win was perfect for where we are at.

After working the other dogs we did a walk up followed by a blind with a diversion bird on the way back. Both Fred and I are having fun with this new type of training that involves many of the different elements that we have practiced. I am sure that we will still be doing drills and focusing on one thing or another; but for right now its a blast to throw it all out there and "Call the Audible" to make every experience a learning one!